


part iv: i will do nothing (but go blind)

by dweeblet



Series: Rooke to H1 [5]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Assault, Autistic Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Bad Decisions, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Gavin Reed Being Less of an Asshole, Gen, Hank Anderson is Bad at Feelings, Hate Crimes, Implied/Referenced Suicide, LGBTQ Character, M/M, Not Beta Read, Protective Siblings, Relapsing, Series, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 19:03:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweeblet/pseuds/dweeblet
Summary: Connor gets into the car next to him with sickening poise, unruffled and perfect in every goddamn way. He’s wearing someone else’s clothes, no shits given about being professional or even presentable. He’d be kicked out of any school in a ten-mile radius for violating the dress code, probably. It’s not very Connor, but Hank isn’t even sure what that even means anymore. He’s not really sure of anything.





	part iv: i will do nothing (but go blind)

**Author's Note:**

> kill me now its ass o clock in the mornin but i needed to get this done and posted before i die. warning for all of the curse words, mentions of suicide, alcohol abuse, masturbation / sex talk i think, probably dissociation, and lots of negative self talk and general bad vibes. not a happy fic
> 
> also!! pls read the other ones first because it wont make sense otherwise

Hank’s a fucking mess for the rest of the goddamn week. 

 

It’s only two or three days, maybe, but they all bleed together into a drunken slurry of hazy masturbation and cold takeout. Shit food and canoe-sex beer are barely distraction enough, but he takes what he can get, stealing little moments of ignorance and hoarding them greedily. Hank spends his nights eating in front of the TV with Sumo’s begging head resting on his knee, and he lets the dog lick out his empty-ish cartons before tossing all the cardboard and shitty plastic chopsticks into a pile next to the overfilled garbage can. He looks up gay porn after dinner. 

 

After he finishes, biting a muffled “Connor!” into his arm with the final stroke, and wads up his tissues, Hank curls in his bed to sleep on top of the blankets. He alternates between crying himself into unconsciousness and wanting to break somebody’s neck in equal measure. (He would rather like that somebody to be  _ him,  _ or  _ himself _ .) It depends on the night, but he always passes into sleep that’s light and restless, leaving him even more exhausted than when he first laid down to rest. 

 

It doesn’t at all escape him that he deserves this pathetic eking out of his misery. 

 

What precious moments of sobriety that slip through his ugly, selfish haze of guilt are spent replaying that goddamn fucking night in his head, over and over. His memories of that evening are all smeared together like wet paint in a rainstorm, spotty and nearly-incoherent—only fragmented, distorted splotches of color remain to suggest the original image—but Hank isn’t an idiot. He sees how many openings Connor gave him, how forgiving he was, how fuckin’ desperate the poor guy was to just make it all okay again—and how he  _ ruined _ that. 

 

(He knows the important parts.)

 

Connor came home to  _ their _ house, where the pair of ‘em’d been bunking together for almost a  _ year _ at this point, and called for him. It’s reasonable to expect a response, so when Hank didn’t say jack shit on account of being wasted to hell and back in the goddamn living room, it makes sense for the poor guy to have been upset. Shit, he was passed out and everything. Connor, the asshole, went to all the trouble to try and wean him off the booze and make him comfy while doing it, and there Hank goes fucking that all up too, like everything else in his life.

 

So of course the stupid fucking android does his scanny thing to make sure Hank’s okay, because he’s like, Robot Jesus’ little cousin or something and consequently an absolute goddamn saint. He’s doing his weird nursemaid thing where he frets and dotes and hovers like an anxious bumblebee, saying encouraging things in low, gentle tones against the shell of Hank’s ear. 

 

It’s different this time, though. Connor doesn’t get angry at shit, really, but there’s a bite in his voice like peppermint candy, cool and wincingly sweet—fake. It’s the sort of tone that teachers and parents use on misbehaving little kids when they don’t wanna scare the tots by raising their voices. Hank feels miniscule beneath it. 

 

He’s not mad, just disappointed, or some shit like that—but he still cares enough, for some reason, to try and help out in the only overbearing way he knows how. And then Hank fucks it up even more. He fucks it up so hard that Connor, who’s literally designed to be an obnoxiously persistent criminal negotiator, gives up and splits.

 

(He couldn’t get outta the house fast enough. He didn’t just leave; he  _ fled _ .)

 

Connor is basically the fucking Terminator with weaponized puppy eyes. He can kill a man barehanded without any effort at all, can snipe a motherfucker within something like five millimeters’ margin from a thousand feet away. Connor, in theory, can pick Hank up and break him in two like any other weakling human fleshbag, if he wanted to—and being as drunk as he was that night? 

 

He was totally at the android’s mercy. And yet he managed to be  _ that _ much of an asshole that the goddamn murderbot couldn’t take it a second longer, so he slammed the door behind him and left everything else to rot. 

 

That shit stings like hell even now. It’s better that he left, probably, almost definitely, but that doesn’t stop the bitter bloom of loneliness that spreads in Hank’s chest like an opening flower. That’s all his own fault, but it hurts anyway and doesn’t give a fuck about whether that’s fair or makes any goddamn sense.

 

Connor has been cutting him slack from day one, but Hank always has to push the goddamn boundary—see just how far he can stretch people before they finally snap and fuck off into the night, never to be seen again. It’s like some sick entertainment, he guesses. Might as well do  _ something _ to engage with the people around him, even if it’s a shitty substitute for the real thing that happens between normal people. 

 

Hank can’t afford to actually get attached to anybody because—shit, he doesn’t know. Why is that?

 

Is it that he thinks he’s too fucking pathetic to deserve shit like friendship, or romance, or family? He  _ knows _ that much’s true, case in point. He’s a washed-up old perv, for one, with suicidal tendencies, a filthy fucking mouth, and a considerable drinking problem. He’s not pretty to look at or nice to be around in any capacity. 

 

As far as redeeming qualities go, those are sorely lacking. He used to be good at his job, Hank supposes, and some days he can still be sharp when he’s moderately sober, but all the good shit’s far off behind him: a teeny blue speck in the distance while the rickety little shuttle of his life hurtles directly into the goddamn sun. 

 

Is he afraid that if he gets too happy with his life and the people around him, the universe will call bullshit and yank them away like it did with Cole? Fuck, probably. Subconscious fear, or some Freudian junk like that. It’s all bullshit anyway. Hank’s seen his fair share of shrinks in his life—he hates them, by the way—but even all these years later it’s starting to look like their bullshit actually has a point. 

 

Maybe all of those self-help books were right about loving yourself before you can truly love anybody else, or some shit like that. Hank hates himself a whole fuckin’ lot, so it’s not much of a stretch to guess that’s why he’s so emotionally constipated. Which he  _ knows _ that he is; it isn’t changing any time soon.  He just wishes it  _ would _ .

 

Maybe this is all down to fate, or something. Hank would very much like to sock God in the face for humor like that. Shit was looking up for a little while, this glimmer of hope on the horizon—far away even when he squints, but damn if it ain’t there, waiting. It might even be great, eventually.

 

There he is: Connor’s a good friend, they enjoy each other’s company. They laugh together. Hank’s blood pressure’s less shitty, and he drinks less, and he starts to not hate getting up in the morning. Shit’s pretty alright—for just long enough that he starts to get used to it. But then it’s all fucking gone, like it always is, because suddenly he can’t keep it the hell in his pants, crushing like a goddamn high schooler.

 

(The last time he got so relentlessly hot and bothered like this was—shit, maybe actual high school. Valedictorian chick at prom, he thinks. She was pretty. Connor’s prettier.)

 

Maybe it’s all some cruel cosmic joke that genuinely good things—and people—sometimes happen to Hank, and then he fucks them up until they don’t come back again. Some big ethereal sky daddy’s kicked back on his throne and laughing at his misfortune, his floundering attempts at not being a shit person and the failures that ensue anyway. 

 

Successes, even little ones, get fewer and farther between until eventually he’ll win that goddamn game at the kitchen table and be able to ask somebody why. That will be his last success.

 

In the end, though, it really doesn’t matter why shit is the way it is, because it sucks either way.

 

Whenever he closes his eyes the guilt crashes into him with all the force of a physical blow—but because he’s a shitty piece of human garbage, that feeling of wretchedness turns into a big sticky mess of angry and horny instead. It’s easier to deal with that shit with enough distraction and weirdly specific porn as opposed to like, actually thinking about how fucked he is. Because the fact is, Hank already  _ knows, _ and he’d really like to not be reminded anymore.

 

It’s selfish to want to ignore this shit, he’s also aware, but he doesn’t have the energy to care anymore. This is his life and he can fuck it up however he damn well pleases, thanks.

 

How many openings, though, did Connor give him in that one conversation alone? Hank was too drunk then to have made any reliably clear memories of their exchange at the time. He is also  _ way _ too drunk to try and count now, so he comes to the conclusion that it was in the ballpark of “too fucking many” and calls it a day.

 

And for all the chances he got handed to him, all prettied up on silver with ribbons and bows and earnest conviction, Hank just  _ had _ to go and flip the platter. It’s a running trend.

 

The staccato rain tapping on his window sounds like machine-gun fire to his pounding headache. Even the muted grey sky, shadowed by pregnant thunderheads, is far too fuckin’ bright where it peeks through the blinds. Hank buries his head beneath his comforter with a fractured groan, hoarse voice crackling awkwardly in his throat. His mouth feels like sandpaper and tastes like sick. At least he managed to stumble into bed last night, even if his head’s on the wrong end.

 

His phone is chattering at him from across the room where it swings from the wall by its charging cable, evidently having been knocked off the nightstand at some point while Hank was drunk and/or asleep. Fuck if he knows, really. His ringtone shrills at him in hyena-mocking tones of cheerful marimba, and Hank growls at it as he rolls over and wiggles across the bed so he can reach the stupid fuckin’ thing.

 

Something in his chest twinges when he sees the caller ID— _ Jeff _ , it says. Goddamn Jeffery, with the balls to bug him at—ten twenty fuck in the morning, he guesses. It’s not past noon yet but living with Connor has gone and raised the damn bar, so he can’t get away with not answering. At least, not without Jeff getting on his ass for tucking back into the booze like this.

 

Hank stretches his arm out and bites the bullet, swiping the little green “answer” bubble across his phone’s display. “What?” He growls into the receiver, propping himself up on his elbow into a halfway-sitting position. His neck is stiff as hell and sore with little pulses of headache that thump steadily behind his ears.

 

“Good morning to you too,” Jeffery replies drily. “I hope you didn’t get too used to sleeping in—you’re back in business.” 

 

Hank can’t help but snort. “Already?” The looming feeling in the pit of his belly is just the hangover. “Sure, fine.” He sighs, palming his face—his skin feels greasy and thin beneath his hand. He needs to fucking shower, gross old man. “When d’ya want me back in?” 

 

There is a brief pause during which Hank straightens himself up a little, swiping his tangled hair from his face and smoothing his beard somewhat as he swings his legs over the side of his bed. None of it makes him feel any cleaner or more worthy of respect, but he can at least say that he tried. Sort of. He puts Jeffery on speaker-phone so that he can get up and stretch out. A groan escapes him when his spine realigns with a series of neat little clicks that are probably unhealthy, but fuck if they don’t feel fantastic.

 

“Sometime today would be nice,” says Jeffery over the clacking of a keyboard. “But…” he hesitates, then huffs out an explosive sigh that makes Hank’s phone speaker hiss out a little pop-rock protest at its volume. “I guess if you’d rather wait till tomorrow, that’s fine too. Already been long enough, half a day more won’t kill anybody.”

 

Hank doesn’t need to think about it. “I’m takin’ the rest of the day then,” he says. His head’s still pounding like some idiot took a goddamn jackhammer to the top of his neck, carving nasty little fissures in to stab behind his eyes with every heartbeat. His legs feel like jello, and the front of his shirt is filthy with whiskey and bile and probably other shit too. He’s pretty disgusting—he  _ feels  _ gross in too many fucking ways, and he needs to trim back at least one of ‘em before even considering going back into work, where Connor will inevitably be.

 

Shit. How the fuck’s he gonna work with Connor again? God fucking dammit.

 

“I figured you’d say that,” Jeffery acknowledges, voice thick with resignation. Hank can almost hear the grimace on his face, the shake of his head. Some things never change, and all that bullshit. “I’ve already contacted Connor separately, but it's your call on the carpool or whatever you two’re up to. Doesn't matter to me, I just need the pair of you in before ten tomorrow. There’s plenty of backlog to work through; don't be late.” He hangs up without saying goodbye. Yeah, some shit sticks. 

 

Now Hank needs to figure out how the fuck he’s going to deal with heading back into the precinct and sitting across from Connor. How he’s gonna deal with the blood rushing to his face, the boolean switch in his dick that screams “TRUE DAT” whenever the stupid idiot android’s in proximity.

 

How he’s going to deal with all the shit he doesn’t remember saying—but Connor  _ does _ , with utmost clarity down to the goddamn picosecond. Hank doesn’t know what he’s going to do, what he might be able to say to make things alright again. He doesn’t know if he  _ can  _ ever know, but he’s a coward, and he doesn’t want to try.

 

Connor is the sun, and Hank’s wings are dripping in acid-hot streaks down his back, branding him with the mark of an absolute fucking fool. He doesn’t think that metaphor even works, but fuck off, he’s not a goddamn poet. Ha.

 

He likes to think that he’s not just some crass, vulgar old pervert. He likes to think that he’s got some introspective side, something soft like the way he was before Cole died and his life went to hell. It’s the kind of thing people always talk about in books and movies; some bitter guy with a tragic past and a heart of gold beneath his gruff exterior, just waiting to be loved and made whole again.

 

Maybe Hank has been telling himself so much that he’s like that—like some privately sensitive martyr who’s all fucked up and wounded by the world, like he deserves a little room to gnarr and snap and be forgiven anyway—that he doesn’t even know who he  _ really _ is anymore. Or, he didn’t, he supposes. Nowadays, though, he’s starting to think he has a good inkling.

 

Historically, things have happened in Hank’s life in bursts, like static shocks. He’d been hoping, foolishly, that this—working with Connor, the revolution—would be the start of an upward-trending sequence, buzzes of energy that might liven him instead of hurt. He’s sorely disappointed, obviously, but he really should’ve expected this. It’s that whole thing about fucking up good things that he does, expecting shit to go differently just because he hopes hard enough despite not bothering to actually change.

 

He doesn’t even have the excuse of being all “what’s the point? I have nothing in my life anymore” because the fact is, he  _ does _ . He has idiots like Connor, and the makings of salvaged respect at the precinct, and the relit spark of an old friendship or two now that he’s less drunk and pissy than before. (Which really ain’t saying much, but people like Jeff and Ben seem pretty damn happy about it.) 

 

Shit really  _ was _ looking up. Being friends with Connor made him drink less which made other people like him more which made him happier which made him like Connor even more—but then he suddenly liked him  _ too _ much, and he couldn’t control himself. So now he’s back to square one.

 

Hank guesses the point of all this uncomfortable thinking is that he’s not entirely sure it’s worth trying anymore. He could get up and shower and attempt to be a human person, but where’ll that take him? Getting to know Connor—seeing all the sneaky little facets of humor and preference and  _ personhood _ that softened his metal edges—made Hank feel a little bit less alone, less like the world was an irredeemable shithole. It’s still a shithole, mind you, but improvement didn’t seem so ridiculous anymore with somebody beside him, and that was a start.

 

But he should’ve known better than to think that kind of sappy bullshit could last. Hugging it out—yeah, right. Made him feel good for like, three minutes or something before Connor huffed a silent chuckle into his shoulder and said that “this is much longer than is generally considered to be socially acceptable for a hug. I think humans call this feeling “awkwardness.””

 

Honey got a big storm coming? Check. Cut to something in the ballpark of eleven months later and see this entire shitstorm of incomprehensible dumbfuckery courtesy of Hank’s stupid drunk dick.

 

He stews in all that with his body on autopilot. He watches himself finally stand properly and paw through his hamper for some cleanish clothes to wear, then move like a zombie to the bathroom. Hank turns the water on and keeps on steeping in his misery under a piping hot showerhead, stinging bullets of spray pelting his back and the top of his head. Hank can handle going back to work. 

 

He can work with monotony and paperwork and stinking crime scenes still thick with flies. He’s been a cop for thirty goddamn years—Hank can handle all that, even if he doesn’t always like it. (He almost never  _ likes _ shit anymore, not in any meaningful way, but that’s besides the point.) He can deal with work, but what about Connor? He keeps on thinking in aimess ouroboros circles as he steps out and dries his hair and dresses himself up like something vaguely resembling a functioning person. 

 

(It’s an unconvincing costume.)

 

He went to the trouble of showering and everything, dressed and all, but Hank doesn’t go outside. He lets Sumo into the backyard to do his business instead of taking him out properly. “No walk today, sorry bud.” Breakfast is a frozen pasta dinner that’s nuked a minute too long, so it tastes like cheesy rubber.

 

The house is a goddamn sty, to be honest. Hank’s gotten spoiled, what with Connor always insisting on doing the chores, keeping everything spick-and-fucking-span like the world’s most anal-retentive maid. He likes to keep busy, he says, and he likes living here, so the upkeep is also for his benefit. 

 

“There is no cause for guilt on your part,” he’d said. “I do it because it matters to  _ me _ , not out of any obligation.” True to his word, he always treats this house, and Hank’s damn things, like they’re spun of something sacred—with respect that Hank can’t understand. The place hasn’t been so clean since being  _ built _ , he thinks, as it was when Connor was here. Hank has never been any help in that regard.

 

Without his help, all of Hank’s shit has piled up again: takeout containers spilling over the top of his trash can, beer bottles in tottery lines against the foot of the couch and the edge of the table. Everything’s a mess of miscellaneous discarded bullshit and dirty clothes. He has no clean laundry, and the shirt he’s wearing now, despite being among the least revolting of his filthy hamper’s contents, reeks like sweat and despair. He’s pathetic.

 

Everything is shitty. Hank hates the state of his house but his limbs feel heavy. Trudging into the kitchen and even  _ looking _ at his stack of dirty plates, all crusted with dried food, is a monumental effort. He doesn’t clean up, either.

 

He doesn’t do much of anything, really. Sumo gets fed, and let out to take his jurassic-park grade doggy dump when he cries at the door, but that’s about goddamn it. Otherwise, Hank sits and is silent. Sometimes he sips at the gross warm beers lying around that haven’t been finished from a day or two ago, but it’s not enough to get him properly buzzed, and he feels too shitty to actually stand up and get some more. In the end the alcohol is only bitter. He wallows like the sack of shit he is, and he thinks.

 

Tomorrow, will Connor be sitting all prim and awkward at his desk like he did when they first met? Will he refuse to stay partners with Hank? Or will he perch himself up on the edge of the desk, pushing the engraved name plate aside with the sleek junction between his sculpted silicone ass and thigh and pretend like nothing ever happened? Both options are shitty for different reasons.

 

At least one of those reasons is a bookmarked video entitled “18+ POWER BOTTOM TWINK WRECKS BEAR! BLOWJOB / ANAL WORKPLACE SEX” which makes Hank wonder what might happen if he made Connor mad enough to pin him against the desk so that their chests press together and their noses almost touch. That would be—something. Fuck. He shouldn’t think like that—so he doesn’t.

 

In large part to avoid that line of thought, Hank rests in fitful naps throughout the day, losing no more than an hour at a time. Sometimes he’ll jerk off, riding his dirty little fantasies out until asleep, or he’ll berate himself instead for having them at all. 

 

He curls up, lethargic, on the sofa and passes in and out of consciousness to the beat of shitty medical dramas from thirty years ago and fucking entertainment news. The asshole savant doctor gets held at gunpoint after pissing off an unstable patient. Blink. Now he’s fucking the dean of medicine. Blink. The talking heads on the news are telling him how to hack his life again. Blink and back to the medical shit. This is pathetic. 

 

Gunshots and screeching metal echo through his fragmented dreams. Hank spins around, crushed against the airbag between the steering wheel and his seat. Sometimes the boy in the back of the car is very small and flushed and screaming out shrill, inarticulate cries of horror and agony. Sometimes he is silent. Sometimes he bleeds blue. 

 

The keen of a flatline bleeds through from the television into the night, ringing in Hank’s ears.  _ He _ is usually pinned beneath the mangled belly of the car, face swollen with bruising, eyes desperate and so fucking  _ terrified _ —but sometimes he’s sitting at a table playing roulette with Hank. Sometimes acrylic blue jelly and black alloy shrapnel explodes from his temple with the bullet. Sometimes it’s red and shattered bone.

 

Once or twice, during his longer naps, Hank is on top of another man. They are breathing hard, and slick with liquid—sweat, spit, seed—or with blood. Or with thirium, fresh enough to still be warm and buzzing with electricity. Sometimes they’re fucking, obviously. Other times, he’s doing CPR, anything close to lust left a distant memory beneath the urgency howling in his ears. 

 

Hungry kisses melt into gasping rescue breaths and back again, screaming down his spine like lightning bolts. Thirty pumps and two breaths into a tiny, tiny mouth. Hah-ah-ah-ah, stayin’ alive—fuck. Old disco thumps in the hotel room, rattles the ramshackle thin walls with its bassline. Connor doesn’t breathe—there’s no gasp when their lips crash together—and he doesn’t move; just takes it. It never ends well either way.  

 

No matter how the memories and fantasies bleed together, they always makes Hank feel sick and filthy. Guilty, sobbing over the impossibly small body of his  _ son _ —then he’s hot and bothered and  _ horny _ and thinking about Connor. He’s fucking disgusting. This whole torrential shitstorm’s a distraction from the grief, he knows, but he hates it all the same. It’s old hurt. It shouldn’t bleed like this anymore.

 

Eventually, painfully, his sleep becomes dreamless and still, and he doesn’t wake from it until something like five or six in the evening. The sky outside his window is dark and hazy, pollution blotting out the stars. Somewhere in the distance, a little dog yaps, and an ambulance cries. The city is suitably lonely and cold.

 

For dinner, Hank makes a shitty sandwich with strawberry jam and previously-unopened peanut butter that’s  _ older _ than  _ Connor _ is, for fuck’s sake. It’s dry and tacky in his mouth like ash, but he eats it anyway because there’s nothing better to do.

 

After feeding Sumo and checking that his water is acceptably clean-ish, without any dust or hair floating in it, Hank goes out for the first time in what must be a long goddamn while. He hasn’t been keeping track, though, so maybe not. It doesn’t matter anyway.

 

He sits in the driver’s seat and doesn’t move for some time, blinking back tears that bubble up behind his eyes. Steering wheel. Airbag. Connor. Cole. The passenger seat is empty, and so is the back. He reminds himself of that—it’s just him. Sumo’s back in the house doing his own thing, licking his ass or sleeping or eating the garbage, so he’s alone. (Nobody to fuck over for a little while, except himself.) Hank starts up the ignition and peels shakily out of the driveway, then down his street and onto a very familiar route.

 

The caramel beams of the streetlights cast odd-shaped shadow puppets through Hank’s windshield as he passes them by, filtered through the naked trees and thin ice that encrusts his car. There’s a bokeh chain of winking city lights, icy in the distance across the channel, and they watch him like so many fluttering eyes as the car passes over the bridge. The wide white face of the moon judges him, too, the bitch. So do the other cars on the road. Hank feels surrounded.

 

“Land of Liquor!” has a very fucking obnoxious neon-lit sign that blares through the foggy dark of the evening, beckoning him towards shelter. The brisk outside air slaps Hank in the face when he opens his door, but he weathers it and shuffles over the sandy parking lot to the building. The bell on the door tinkles like there’s shit to be happy about when he steps inside, struck by the thick smell of cigars and wine. 

 

It only takes a few minutes for Hank to get in and out—the cashier knows him by name, which is probably bad—and he stacks both six packs onto the passenger seat beside him before sliding into the car himself. Beer bottles clatter almost musically together as he drives over the pockmarked winter road, and Hank doesn’t think at all about anything other than the asphalt in front of him. It’s too warm out for ice, just sand and old slush.

 

He pulls into his driveway and all but bolts into the house, case of beer underarm as he fumbles with his keys. The world is too big and even a hundred miles away there’d be too much Connor in it for Hank to bear. He can’t deal with that shit, not like this. 

 

He gets through four and a half drinks on the sofa in the unlit living room before finally feeling spent again—or, more than before, anyway. The fleeting window of energy that took him down to buy his booze is long since gone, so Hank just lies down in his bed and stays there like a lump of shit. 

 

His laptop is tucked in the nightstand drawer underneath his antidepressants and blood pressure shit, and his phone is on the bedside table. He could look at something. Porn. Cat videos. Shitty memes from his childhood. One of his most recently-opened tabs, he remembers very clearly, is a layman’s guide to android anatomy and first-aid repair. (For all the dangerous field work he and Connor do, it only makes sense to know a little something.) He doesn’t want to look at that, so he doesn’t bother with opening up his computer at all. Coward.

 

Instead, Hank looks up and stares at the plaster of his bedroom ceiling. He’d done it himself not long after buying the house, so it’s messy as all hell and makes plenty of shapes with its old ridges and dips—and he falls into some quiet, confined mockery of cloud-gazing in trying to decipher them in the dark. As though the belly of his roof might ever near comparison to the endless yawning sky. 

 

Look at him, pretending like he’s a fucking scholar. At least it’s an apt metaphor.

 

His energy is lacking despite how little he’s done today. All of his depression pools thick and slow in his limbs, weighing them like shackled goddamn boulders. He couldn’t bring himself to get up and do something even if he wanted to. He doesn’t know what he’d even do if he did, so he just sleeps instead—just like he did on the sofa, in fits and bursts of restless unconsciousness.

 

The next morning sees Hank up at eight at the screechy behest of his alarm. Impressively, he stumbles through his morning routine almost through breakfast without remembering or thinking about how boned he is—but it occurs to him again with a spoonful of soggy bran flakes halfway up to his mouth that he’s absolutely fucking screwed. Blood roars in his ears, making him feel light headed even when sitting down, hunched over the kitchen table. 

 

He keeps feeling like shit across the driveway and into his car and down the street and into the city. Hank’s stomach rolls and churns like a cantankerous ocean, and anxiety spreads beneath his skin, vicious and black like smoke. It pisses him off that he’s this pathetic, but he does nothing about it.

 

As promised, he makes it into the office by nine thirty-ish. He nods to the android receptionist—Lola, he thinks her name turned out to be—and makes a beeline for the break room to pick up some more coffee. (And also to avoid going anywhere near his desk where Connor is almost inevitably waiting like a fucking stalker.) He fills a paper cup with watery black caffeine-bean juice that tastes like garbage and sips at it to avoid looking at Reed when he shuffles in for a refill of his own.

 

“Didn’t come in yesterday, huh?” Hank lowers his head deeper into his flimsy styrofoam cup, signalling with every idiot cell in his body that he isn't in the mood for this conversation whatso-fucking-ever. 

 

“Where's wonderboy?” Reed asks anyway, omnipresent smugness coloring his voice. “I got some killer cat vids, hope they'll be able to turn ‘im to the dark side.”

 

Hank almost chokes on his coffee. 

 

First of all—since when does  _ Reed _ talk about  _ Connor _ like they’re even remotely close to tolerant of each other? Second, it’s getting dangerously close to ten—and Connor likes to be in at eight-thirty on the dot, barring shit like traffic, but even then, he calculates for that kind of junk. Why isn’t he here? “Fuck if I know,” he says, defensively, and in part to convince himself more than Reed. “I ain’t his babysitter.”

 

He avoids any further conversation by getting the hell out of there, stalking off to his desk with his drink held tight enough to make his cup creak. 

 

“Therapy really helps!” Gavin calls after him. “You should try it!”

 

Jeff nods to him through the glass of his elevated office door before turning back to whatever document he’s working on inside. He looks almost as tired as Hank feels. Once back over to his usual spot, Hank stares at Connor’s desk with heavy eyes.

 

The Newton’s cradle is on the right side, where the computer mouse would be if Connor didn’t just interface with everything directly. It’s sleek and unmarred by oily human fingerprints, probably thanks to the little microfiber cloth folded into a teeny little square at one corner of the knick-knack’s base. Damn, that’s very fuckin’ Connor, Hank thinks. He knows the kid well.

 

Then again… maybe not. 

 

On the other side of the monitor is a framed cork board propped against the divider, probably only six inches tall and a little bit wider. Connor’s hung a damn gallery’s worth of printed-out photos of Sumo there with push pins. That’s predictable enough. 

 

But there’s also a little paper heart striped in purple, grey, and green, and a picture of a fat orange tabby that Hank doesn’t recognize in the lower right corner. He has no idea where either damn thing came from. The little board is partially propped up on the outer end by a ceramic mug that says “I’M THE DROID YOU’RE LOOKING FOR” in big bubble letters all the way around. Hank wasn’t even aware that Connor  _ drank _ , period, let alone coffee. A fist-sized clay pot holds a little pincushion cactus at the other corner; it has a tiny origami  _ bowler hat _ folded from a yellow sticky note sitting on top.

 

Chen’s always folding her napkins into giraffes and shit, so that’s probably where the  _ cactus hat _ came from. The aro/ace heart must be from Gavin—and apparently that common ground’s also been enough for him to stop being an absolute asswipe, too. Or maybe he’s serious about the therapy—who knows. He knows that the Newton’s cradle is from Mike Wilson, for some reason. The cat and the cactus, though? Hank has no fucking idea who or where those are from. Connor has never mentioned either of them.

 

He feels acutely hollow. It’s only been a minute or two, tops, but Hank feels like he’s frozen there for hours. He stops looking at Connor’s goddamn desk. It looks to him like a stranger’s desk, or maybe an acquaintance—but not a friend. Not… like Hank thought they were. It’s somehow more surreal and alien to not know about all of Connor’s favorite things than it is to watch him do shit like slurp bloodstains or android telepathy. He hates it.

 

Hank sits down at his own desk and boots up the computer terminal, punching in his login information and getting to the newest case file that’s popped up on the little dock at the bottom of the screen. This is a perfectly good distraction. Everything is fine. It’s a report of an assault, only an hour and a half old, with possible cause cited as anti-human “revenge violence” perpetrated by a splinter group of radical androids—more likely than not related to similar attacks and vandalism in the area. 

 

They’ve been graffitiing shit out back of restaurants and hotels for months now. Fluorescent yellow spray paint signed with an upside-down triangle is their trademark, it seems. The inflammatory messages are written in both English and, curiously, base64—or so Connor’s analysis of previous graffiti says. It’s almost ten past and he still isn’t there, so Hank can’t ask to confirm. So he pulls up the photos taken of some of the marks. 

 

“ _ Androids will live! _ ” makes sense. It’s a technically accurate declarative statement, or some shit. Hank doesn’t disagree, anyway.

 

“ _ Zmxlc2ggZGllcw== _ ,” on the other hand, means absolutely jack shit to him. Luckily for Hank, however, it’s easy enough to plug the shit into an online decoder—if it’s also base64, it should spit out something he might be able to use. It takes him a little while of flipping between the blurry picture of drippy-ass paint to the sans-serif text box, pecking out the nonsensical characters along the way, but in the end it all comes down to the press of a little green button. “ _ Flesh dies, _ ” it says, and nothing more. 

 

“ _ Androids will live; flesh dies. _ ” Well, that’s fucking ominous. Definitely support for the running theory that it’s anti-human radicals, though.

 

He logs that shit into the case file and considers going down to the crime scene. Along with that vandalism, a human passerby—one Vicki Lee—was attacked with bats and fists by something like three or four androids in masks. A bystander leaving the nearby store called the nine-one-one for her—somebody called Quincy Madu. Lee’s mostly okay, according to the report—just bruised and shaken up, possibly with a dislocated shoulder, but has no life-threatening injuries, and Madu is unharmed. 

 

Even commercial androids are, as a general rule, considerably stronger than humans, enough to be able to kill them barehanded, so the fact that this bunch left the lady alive is almost certainly a message to other humans. Yikes. It’s a fucking cluster already, and he’s barely been at work for half an hour. 

 

He looks down to the time marked at the bottom right corner of his display. It’s about nine fifty-five now, and still no goddamn sign of Connor. He’s going alone, then. With an explosive sigh, Hank stands up and reaches into his pocket to input the location into his phone’s GPS. It takes a long minute for the shitty thing to plan his path, and it tells him that despite traffic delays he will be on the fastest route to his location. Sure he fucking will.

 

Before he heads out, he needs more coffee. Hank goes over and grabs it how he likes: piping hot, black, and with a metric fuckton of sugar. (Connor likes to make him use zero-calorie sweetener instead, but fuck him. The real shit’s better.) He takes a long swig before putting the little foam top onto his cup, then steels himself to get out there and do some shit.

 

He turns to leave and then rubbernecks, spinning so hard he has fucking whiplash, or something, because Connor is like, right over there, striding all smooth and perfect through reception and towards his desk. He looks…  _ normal _ , like nothing’s bothering him. It’s ten on the dot.

 

Except instead of his neat little semi-formal ensemble of flannels and button ups and clean-cut jeans, he’s wearing a massive fucking sweater that drapes alluringly from his shoulder, exposing the slender column of his neck and his freckled collarbones all the way down to a peek at his pecs. It’s lilac with a cartoon bottle of pills on the front, but all of the capsules are kittens. 

 

“If you can’t make your own neurotransmitters,” it says, “store-bought is fine.” Hank’s pretty sure that little phrase stopped circulating like, twenty-five fucking years ago. The sweater is pinched at Connor’s waist by the knotted arms of his windbreaker wrapped around him, emphasizing the slender cant of his hips when he walks. He’s also wearing  _ yoga pants _ , and not the baggy kind, and fuzzy socks peek out from his timberland-knockoff work boots.

 

Shit, he looks so fucking  _ soft _ —vulnerable,  _ human _ . Hank sucks in a steadying breath and wishes for a cold shower. 

 

He also double-takes when  _ another _ Connor follows him in, taller and broader by a solid few inches, but undeniably  _ Connor _ . He looks down at the styrofoam cup in his hands and wonders if somebody’s spiked his coffee. RK900, he thinks this is. He used to work here, Hank vaguely remembers, but he was only there for like, two weeks, and all dressed up in his Cyberlife monkey-suit.

 

Now RK900 is wearing a tie-dyed shirt and skinny jeans over red running shoes. He makes eye contact with Hank and he  _ panics _ . His heart rabbits, stealing all the breath from his lungs and draining the blood from his face, and the hair on the back of his neck stands up in shuddering prickles.

 

Ice-blue eyes bore into him, burning with cold fury and an unspoken declaration:  _ don’t fuck with me, or else.  _ The “or else” is an undeniable promise. Those eyes belong to a killer—a motherfucker perfectly capable and  _ absolutely _ willing to put Hank in the goddamn ground without a second thought. It might even be funny if he ignores the weighted boots of guilt strapped to his legs, rooting him in place. Hank couldn’t run if he wanted to.

 

RK900 puts an arm around Connor’s shoulder (fuck!) and squeezes, as though to be reassuring, and in response Connor tips his head over to nuzzle the taller android’s chest. Fucking hell. RK900 tips his head, eyes going all soft and adoring when he looks down at Connor. He ruffles Connor’s hair with a little smile, and his LED flickers in a few lazy cycles of yellow before returning to blue—they’re talking, doing their weird telepathy bullshit. 

 

Something ugly knots up in Hank’s chest, heating his breaths and making his lungs too big to fit inside his ribs. Sucking in a mouthful of air is enough to make them strain against his bones, poking through the gaps in swollen folds from the force of it like extruding clay. Shit, fuck, he can’t breathe. He bites his lip to keep from making any sound—he doesn’t know if it’ll be a cry or a curse or something else entirely. He just stares at Connor, the real one.

 

The android in question levels him with a sickeningly even look. His brows are raised, mouth slightly tense but neutral, and his dark brown eyes seem almost warm. 

 

_ Almost _ —but Hank can’t kid himself: there is no goddamn affection there, or if there is, Connor is very consciously and deliberately keeping it from him. (As he should.) But beyond that they are filled to the brim with, of all things, fucking  _ pity _ . It’s distant, stingingly impersonal. Like how he might look at a homeless stranger on the street, going by in a rush, only sparing a passing acknowledgement of “Oh, that’s unfortunate.” Connor is not looking at any sort of friend.

 

(Ex-friend, Hank reminds himself, dipshit. Connor still seems unwilling to recognize even that, though, so it doesn’t matter.)

 

Still, it cuts him to the quick, makes the tangled paroxysm of unadulterated fucking bullshit tighten in his chest and choke him. It shouldn’t. He  _ knows _ it shouldn’t, but Hank is weak as all hell and the hurt of it all but bowls him the over. He just stares like an idiot as Connor breezes past him with long strides. 

 

Connor waves pleasantly to Reed on the way to his desk, totally ignoring Hank’s presence, and gets a jaunty salute in return. RK900 trails behind him like a bodyguard, taking in the station with unveiled curiosity, as though seeing it for the first time all over again despite having worked here in the past, if only briefly. He shoulder-checks Hank on his way by and makes no attempt to hide it.

 

Well, fuck. Pissing off the protective murderbot spells… oh, shit if he knows, fucking  _ murder _ in Hank’s future. He keeps his mouth shut, then, eyes turned down toward his coffee.

 

The pair of them go and do some shit—Connor strides into the break room, totally ignoring Hank, then returns to his desk with a little paper cup to water his fucking cactus. He smiles down at the goddamn plant like it’s his baby, but when his gaze slides back over Hank it all stops, slipping off his face like water on wax as though it’d never been there at all. He looks empty.

 

Hank stomps out the curdling feeling in his belly. He’s at work. He’s going to do his job and that’s all, Connor or no Connor. Fuck, why’d he have to pick a fight with his  _ work  _ partner again? Roommate and best friend was bad enough, but some shitty little subconscious devil in Hank must really, unironically be hellbent on making his every aspect of his life perfectly fucking miserable.

 

He has no goddamn clue what Connor’s been up to during their time apart. It’s only been a few days, or something, but the android has done a complete one-eighty and Hank has no idea how the fuck he’s going to work with that. He’d been prepared for Connor to be mad, or to ignore the problem, or to cry, or  _ something _ . He’d been prepared for Connor to  _ react _ in a way that implied he had… feelings. And stuff. There’s nothing here for Hank.

 

RK900 is talking with Reed, who seems unusually pleasant as they look at something on his phone. They must agree on something they see, because they nod and chuckle to each other, and RK900 pats Gavin’s shoulder good-naturedly. Something is said about “sessions” and “wellbeing” and “lunch at Koreana” because—they’re friends? Fuck if Hank knows. 

 

It’s grossly civil; an utterly ordinary goddamn social interaction between two people. Reed is being reasonably polite and everything—it’s fucking weird. Other officers look bemusedly pleased at the fact that Reed is acting like a decent person to an android for once in his life, even if it’s just to get into his empty pants after a lunch date. They wave at RK900, who grins like hell and waves back.

 

There’s nothing for Hank, but Connor seems happy. He seems content with RK900 and Wilson and Chen and even  _ Gavin _ —and most importantly,  _ without  _ Hank. He’s no pangloss, but when he smiled at RK900 and nuzzled into his chest, and got hugged back, Hank knew that Connor didn’t need him. Connor doesn’t need him like he needs Connor, and he doesn’t know what to make of that.

 

Hank looks away and starts to shuffle back towards his own desk. Connor is interfacing with his terminal, but he’s still standing up halfway into the goddamn aisle. The way he’s leaning makes his too-big sweater ride up and expose the slender dip of his back, just above his hips. His ass sticks out, too, pert and decadently outlined by his tight pants.

 

His eyes are shut, lashes splayed and fluttering rapidly against his freckled cheeks as he digs through the provided data with algorithmic thoroughness. His lips move to unspoken words, pink and shiny thanks to the idle flick of his tongue as he wets them. Fuck. Hank’s distracted—he needs to stop this shit. 

 

“Will you be heading to the scene, Lieutenant?” Connor looks at him with vacant eyes. They are chillingly intelligent, almost  _ feral _ in their scanning hunger for knowledge, but they lack the warm spark of emotion that makes Connor seem so  _ alive _ . It’s like they’re back at Jimmy’s all over again, and this  _ isn’t fucking Connor _ . 

 

(Just an RK800, designed to accomplish a task.)

 

Unable to make eye contact, and because Connor prefers it anyway, Hank stares at the android’s LED. It is yellow, processing data, patiently awaiting his response. He wonders if there are any more clones running around like the one from sub forty-nine. Shit, like he needs  _ that _ too. It’d be a mess, but maybe he could be a massive asshole to a clone as opposed to the real thing. Less collateral that way.

 

“Yeah,” he finally says after scraping his thoughts back to something vaguely resembling cohesion. “Uh, shit. Yeah. Was about to go when you showed up. Take it you’re comin’?”

 

Connor nods, perfectly impassive. “That was my intent, Lieutenant.” His dark eyes pick Hank apart like a goddamn specimen under a microscope, and something deep and dark and primal in him rears its head, someplace between reckless arousal and hard-wired fear beneath the evaluating gaze of a predator. 

 

(Connor could  _ fuck him up _ if he wanted to. That shit’s  _ hot _ .)

 

Hank swallows hard over the lump in his throat and shifts in place, rubbing his legs together in a vain attempt to discreetly adjust himself. “Alright, um. Let’s go then, I guess.” He waves half-heartedly and starts towards the door again. Just walk it off, perverted old fuck.

 

Connor reaches into his desk drawer and retrieves something, pocketing it within the oceanic folds of his sweater, but Hank doesn’t see what it is. He just keeps walking, and Connor follows dutifully at his heel, arms tucked neatly at the small of his back and gaze fixed on some nebulous point in the distance, empty. It’s a posture designed to emulate deference, obedience to the command of a human, and it makes Hank feel sick. 

 

(His hair is mussed and he’s wearing human clothes completely unlike the formal Cyberlife uniform, but Hank thinks Connor’s never looked so much like a machine.)

 

They load up into the car—he needs to move some garbage from the passenger seat to make space for Connor, which is super fucking awkward—and hit the road in short time. Peeling somewhat haphazardly out of the station lot, Hank turns on the radio. He flips through a few things before coming to a playlist of nineties hard rock and grind punk that does very little to help drown out his traitorous thoughts and acute cognizance of Connor sitting next to him. 

 

The android, for his part, keeps on staring blankly into the distance like a goddamn mannequin. The only indication that he hasn’t blue-screen-of-death’d or crashed or something is the steady cycle of his LED from blue to yellow and back again as he observes shit through the windshield, and the rhythmic tapping of his fingers in his lap along with the music. 

 

His leg bounces a little with the drumbeats, but the movements are stilted, artificially subdued—Connor likes to bob his head and hum in the car, entire body wiggling along with the chords. He sways at the waist, shoulders rolling up and down, neck loose and relaxed and arms twisting animatedly to the beat. He’s an awful dancer without direction, but he has fun. This—it isn’t that, nothing like it. Now he just seems like an empty automaton, going through the motions. 

 

(It makes Hank feel like a sick, pathetic motherfucker. It’s his fault.)

 

“We’re here,” he grumbles after they pull up to the scene. Connor slides fluidly out of the car, and Hank’s chest tightens when he walks away without even acknowledging him. He looks around after following much less gracefully suit, taking in the area. 

 

It’s not a particularly shitty part of town where violence might be expected, Hank thinks. Not gonna win any fuckin’ bouge awards, but the place is decently kept for its means, hell, maybe even admirably so. On one side of the highway is a stretch of thick, tangled bushes and trees barring off the next neighborhood, and on the other there’s a little twenty-four hour convenience store on the corner across from the bus stop.

 

A wide swath of the store parking lot is taped off and crawling with cops—evidently where the vic, Lee, got her ass kicked. There’s an ambulance parked on the side street that leads to the residential bit, and the back is open: two civilians are sitting on the edge of the boot with blankets on their shoulders.

 

One of the attackers left behind their weapon—an aluminum baseball bat with a wrapped handle. Connor wanders over to investigate it without prompting, the picture of efficiency, while Hank takes it upon himself to go and talk to the victim and witness both. He flashes his badge to pass through the holotape at the edge of the scene. One of the attending rookies fucking  _ salutes _ him like he isn’t old news, to which Hank only grunts and half-heartedly waves.

 

“Hey,” he greets upon reaching the ambulance. 

 

Vicki Lee is obvious by the _nasty_ peppering of pebble-sized bruises and thin cuts on the right side of her face—where the motherfuckers pushed her into the asphalt, no doubt. She’s reaching around her chest to hold an ice pack to her left shoulder over a lacy canary-yellow blouse, visibly wincing as she idly massages her injury. Besides that, she’s a short, slightly overweight woman of what appears to be East-Asian descent, sleek black hair corralled into a messy bun and similarly dark eyes glistening with unshed tears. 

 

Madu, the witness, is her polar opposite: almost comically big and muscular next to this teeny little human. They still have their LED in—Hank thinks they’re one of those construction droids, if he remembers right. They’ve changed the buzz that comes with their model to a bright red weave of elaborate beading and braids that probably goes all the way down to their ass.

 

“Hi,” Madu replies, dark eyes soft and tired. One of their hands moves, rather absently, to pat Lee reassuringly on her good arm. “Uh…”

 

“Hank Anderson,” he supplies. “Just Hank’s fine. My partner and I’re here to take your statements and see if we can catch the bastards that did this to you.”

 

Lee nods shakily. “Sure thing, sir. Um. Where’d you like me to start?”

 

Hank shrugs like an asshole—he’s about to suggest that she just run him through exactly what happened, what she’d been doing before being attacked, but Connor’s voice cuts him off before he can even fucking start.

 

“Lieutenant,” says Connor, perfectly neutral. “I’ve completed analysis of the weapon.”

 

Hank sighs, resisting the urge to tell him to go and fuck off so he stops freaking the witnesses out. “Sorry,” he says instead to the pair sitting on the bed of the ambulance. “Give us just a sec,” and then he turns to Connor again. “Shoot.”

 

“The weapon the unsubs left behind is an aluminum baseball bat approximately eighty-six point three six centimeters in length,” he reports without affect. “It appears to have been manufactured earlier this year and purchased even more recently, I suspect with the explicit intent of being used for a crime like this one.” 

 

His expression shutters, if only minutely, as he glances over towards the pair on the ambulance. “The lack of fingerprints further supports that at least one of the unsubs is an android, and the pattern of denting is consistent with Ms. Lee’s injuries.”

 

“Yikes,” says Madu. They glance worriedly over to the human beside them. “Does that mean you think—somebody targeted her on purpose?”

 

Connor moves a little past Hank, closer to Lee and Madu, and his gaze softens into something warm and understanding. Hank’s guts twist. “I doubt it,” he soothes, raspy tenor thick with warmth and empathy and  _ kindness _ that borders on straight-up affectionate. 

 

(There’s no fucking place for Hank here. It was idiotic to even hope otherwise.)

 

“The graffiti behind the store,” Connor continues, either oblivious or uncaring (or both) of Hank’s pounding heart, “is the mark of a radical group we’ve seen before, and they seem to go after people at random.” He turns towards Lee in particular, taking her good hand very gently in both of his own. “But just to be sure, Ms. Lee, have you ever had any altercations or arguments with androids in the past?”

 

“No,” she tells him, sniffling. “I mean—I feel bad because I never actively supported the revolution. I just kind of avoided it all, y’know?” Connor nods, understanding. He doesn’t like to make prolonged eye contact, Hank knows, but his gaze is  _ so _ soft as it roams over Lee’s face, appreciating her. “But I never—I’d never hurt somebody or go after them just for being an android. I’ve never gotten into a fight about it or anything like that.”

 

“I understand,” says Connor, genuinely. Openly. Like talking to a friend. “It’s not a crime to want to minimize your exposure to conflict, Miss. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a soft yellow ball with a smiley face on it, giving it a demonstrative squeeze before gently pushing it into Lee’s hand. 

 

He just. Gave her his fucking  _ stress ball _ . What the fuck. Hank’s throat constricts painfully, clogged with all the words he can’t possibly say right now, in public at a crime scene in front of multiple witnesses and also other officers. Fuck. Shit—he  _ hates  _ this. Connor is in his fucking  _ element _ , taken to like a fish to water. He’s excelling, and loving it, and Hank is floundering in his wake.

 

“I know this might be hard,” he continues, ignorant of Hank’s silent meltdown as he spreads his attention back to Madu as well. “But it’d be a great help to me and Lieutenant Anderson if you could relay to us exactly what happened.”

 

Madu shifts uncomfortably as Lee sniffles some more. She clutches the stress ball very tightly in her lap. “Would it be okay if I go first?” They ask. “It might be… better.”

 

Connor nods, and his eyes crinkle a little bit at the corners. “Anything you like, Mx. Madu. I’ll be taking notes to better reconstruct what happened, so any order is fine so long as I can get all of the information. Go at your own pace.”

 

“Alright,” they reply, fiddling idly with one of the many braids cascading over their shoulder. “Well, uh, my girlfriend is human and we live together. She’s, um, shark-weekin’, y’know? So I offered to go out and grab some junk stuff, to help her feel better.” 

 

Madu chuckles nervously, seeming embarrassed. Connor smiles at them, angelically sweet, and replies, “That’s very kind of you, I’d say.”

 

(Fuck. That’s a smile like the sun Hank’ll never have turned towards him, that’s for sure. It makes him shrivel up inside like leather in the sun, withered and tough and useless.)

 

“Just bein’ nice,” Madu deflects, stealing his attention again. “Anyway, I bought some ice cream and popcorn and I was heading outta the store to go home when I heard something funky from the other end of the parking lot. So I got kind of nervous, and went over to take a look and make sure everything was okay—it, uh, wasn’t.”

 

Connor is infinitely patient as Madu meanders through their testimony, obviously uncomfortable and shaken by the violence they witnessed. “I’m sure. Were you able to get a good look at the perpetrators, by any chance?”

 

Madu shrugs. “Not really. I know there were probably four or five of them, but that’s about all I’m sure of. It’s dark, and they had bandanas on. I think one of ‘em had, uh, one of those hospital face mask thingies instead? Dunno, but I didn’t get a good look at any like, distinguishing features. They made sure people could see their LEDs, though—did that part on purpose.”

 

“That’s quite alright; I figured as much.” 

 

“So um, I guess Ms. Lee here was getting out of her car to go in and buy stuff, but they jumped her and knocked her down, then started kicking and smacking her up with that bat.” They wince in sympathy, glancing over to Lee. “I called the cops right away, but I’m ashamed to say I was too chicken to go and break it up myself. Just yelled at ‘em some, but it wasn’t really helpful.”

 

Connor shakes his head, waving a dismissive hand. “That’s quite alright,” he repeats. “Your hesitance to get involved with a violent group like that is completely understandable.”

 

“I agree,” Lee says, breaking her silence. “I wouldn’t’ve wanted you to get hurt on my account, anyway. Am I allowed to just, um, corroborate their story? Because that’s a better account than I think I could’ve given. I was all confused when it happened and I’m honestly very tired. Maybe a little bit concussed.”

 

Connor makes a face. “That’s not good,” he says, then chuckles lightly and inclines his head respectfully. “Thank you both for your time—we’ll leave you to your rest, then.” He straightens again and turns to Hank, face a vacuous mask of—fuck, his eyes are so  _ cold _ .

 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, mostly to defend himself before Connor can say anything himself. “G’night you guys. We better get back to log this stuff’n see if it adds to a pattern or some shit.” Hank forces his leaden feet to move, shuffling away from the ambulance and towards his car. 

 

It would probably be a good idea to go and look at the graffiti too, but Hank’s a fucking idiot and he also doesn’t have the energy to care about that right now. Every resource he has is going towards not exploding, or  _ im _ ploding. His lungs feel swollen again and too big for his chest, so even the deepest breaths aren’t enough to sate him.

 

Those people are  _ strangers _ . It’s part of their goddamn  _ job _ to talk to them. Business, not pleasure—but Connor treats them so much friendlier than he does Hank. It’s all so. Fucking hell—he’s  _ fucked up _ . Connor is happy. He’s doing good things and Hank should be happy for him, glad that he’s escaped the burden of caring for such a pathetic old man to do what  _ he _ wants—but he isn’t.

 

He hates that Connor’s doing just fine without him because the opposite couldn’t be further than the truth. Hank  _ isn’t _ just fine, and it’s his own fault that he’s in this situation at all. He wants the ground to open up and swallow him whole because that would be easier than dealing with any of this bullshit.

 

Connor gets into the car next to him with sickening poise, unruffled and perfect in every goddamn way. He’s wearing someone else’s clothes, no shits given about being professional or even presentable. He’d be kicked out of any school in a ten-mile radius for violating the dress code, probably. It’s not very  _ Connor _ , but Hank isn’t even sure what that even means anymore. He’s not really sure of anything.

 

Other than the weight of culpability perched on his shoulders, compressing his back and making him feel small and sick. Connor stares fixedly ahead onto the road, machine-like, without fidgeting or making any attempt at conversation. Hank steals what sideways glances he can, but every little look feels shittier than the last. 

 

Like getting caught stealing from a tip jar, the back of Hank’s neck burns like hell, prickling up to his hairline and steaming his ears. He can look at who or whatever he damn well wants to, but part of him feels like he shouldn’t watch Connor—and not because he should be keeping his eyes on the road.

 

(More like because he doesn’t deserve to.)

 

The only sound is the grumble of the engine and the soft whistle of air passing through Hank’s cracked window. It flits through the cabin, tousling his hair and Connor’s too. Something bright and warm swells in Hank’s chest when Connor leans into the night breeze, eyes half-lidded, expression relaxing just so. Ah, fuck—and there it is. The android smiles, covert and small, and Hank can see it in his rear-view mirror, but it slips away as soon as Connor notices he’s watching. 

 

Hank’s stomach sinks and knots tightly, making more room for his lungs to burst open with his shaky intake of breath. Connor has officially been reminded that he has to be stuck in a car next to a motherfucker he hates, so his good-natured little smirk is replaced by a hard, indecipherable look that crushes any of Hank’s hope into dust.

 

He wants to say something. There’s time, just the two of them, before they get back to the precinct. Connor can’t walk away—but neither can Hank if he says something wrong. Which he will, because it’s all he ever fucking does. With odds like those, how the hell can anybody expect him to talk?

 

So the ride back over is spent without any conversation whatsoever. Hank doesn’t turn the radio back on. The wind sighs against his neck some more, whistling cheerily until he finally closes the damn window and cuts it off. After that there is real silence, only broken by inescapable white noise and the stuttery huff of Hank’s own breathing.

 

Upon pulling into the precinct lot, Connor gets out of the car as soon as Hank unlocks the doors. Hank just sits in the driver’s seat and watches him go, striding purposefully into the building. Every fucking step is measured, flawless, calculated to the millimeter. Shit—even doing something as mundane as heading inside to do  _ paperwork _ , Connor looks unstoppable. Hank hates it.

 

He stews for a minute or two more after Connor disappears through the front door before opening the driver’s side and heading over himself. Lola gets an uninspired grunt on the way through, but she doesn’t trouble herself with looking up from the dogshit young-adult romance novel she’s so indiscreetly reading under the desk. Fair enough.

 

Connor is already seated at his desk, flicking at his Newton’s cradle and watching it swing for a moment before turning to his computer and getting to work. Hank skirts him to as he lays a hand on the terminal and begins interfacing, eyes twitching uncannily and LED cycling in rapid flashes as he compiles and uploads information into the DCPD database. He needs some fucking coffee, so he goes to get some.

 

It’s a little past noon, so Reed is in the break room for his lunchtime pick-me-up. He gives Hank a funky look when he comes in, stirring creamer into his coffee with a skeptical brow raised.

 

“What?” Hank snaps, more roughly than intended, but it’s also  _ Reed _ , so he doesn’t care.

 

Reed shrugs. “Trouble in paradise?”

 

“None of your fuckin’ business,” spits Hank in reply. He shoves his way over to the coffee machine, turning his back on the younger detective.

 

“Jeez.” Reed slurps his coffee, deliberately obnoxious. “Who pissed in your cereal? I dunno what the fuck’s going on with you and tin-twink, but it’s got Nines pissed, which is frankly affecting my  _ therapeutic experience _ , so dial it down a bit for me, mkay?”

 

Hank blinks at the coffee machine as though the little red “heating” indicator might shed some light on the incomprehensible stream of bullshit that just came out of Reed’s mouth. 

 

“Fuck you,” he says in place of anything witty or productive, because he doesn’t care about what appears to be a weird therapist-patient bromance between Reed and RK900. Points for originality, absolutely unex-fucking-pected, but still shitty and pointless. Hank doesn’t have the time or the energy to unpack that shit on top of everything else.

 

“Seriously, old man, chill. I’m paying to make him listen to me rant about how pissed I am about shit, not the other way around. Stop being a dick about it and join couples’ counselling.”

 

Hank will do no such goddamn thing because he and Connor have never been a couple, and even if, hypothetically speaking, they  _ were _ , they certainly aren’t anymore. The coffee machine sputters out the last few drops into his cup, and he takes it. Sucks to Reed, and double-sucks to the mental image of him fucking his android shrink in a supply closet.

 

“I have finished updating the case file with the witness and victim testimonies,” Connor says when Hank comes back to his desk, “plus analysis of the weapon including photographic evidence direct from my memory banks, which are of a higher-resolution than the previous images in use.”

 

“Uh, okay.” Brilliant, Hank. “Good job? Yeah,” What’s he supposed to say to this? “Uh, thanks for loggin’ all that shit.”

 

Connor tips his head, birdlike. “Of course, Lieutenant.” He turns back to his terminal. Hank might as well not exist.

 

“I’m gonna break for lunch,” he says, somewhat experimentally. He has no fucking idea if Connor is going to respond at all, let alone how. He’s kept up this whole charade of the empty, unfeeling “machine” convincingly enough this whole time, but it’s not like he can keep it up forever. Hank  _ knows _ there’s something in there, waiting.

 

It’s not unexpected, but it still cuts him to the quick when the android responds with a flat “Understood, Lieutenant.” Not even an “enjoy your meal” or “see you later.” No “don’t eat any more saturated fats or you’ll reduce your lifespan by thirty-seven minutes per gram.” No goodbye at all. This Connor is empty and cold. 

 

Hank deserves to be treated like nothing, he knows. Intellectually, it makes sense—but his insides twist and swell and make him want to vomit. Why couldn’t Connor just have  _ ignored _ it all? He was drunk, big fucking whoop. People say shitty things all the time when they’re drunk. 

 

Maybe it’s out of spite, or maybe just because he needs it, but Hank takes lunch at Jimmy’s.

**Author's Note:**

> comments give me life, please let me know what u think so i can keep makin more


End file.
